


Tree Trunk

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Bonds die naturally; they break and fall away. But there’s a difference between that and severing what was once a green vine and is now a wooden trunk with effort, between that and not trying to save it at all.
Relationships: Alexandra Garcia & Himuro Tatsuya & Kagami Taiga, Himuro Tatsuya & Kagami Taiga
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Tree Trunk

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be a pov of the immediate aftermath of The Fight from alex's pov but this...is not that

Taiga comes to her with a bruise on his face and words that he’d rather swallow than say. He doesn’t usually keep things inside when he wants to say them; he lets them out whether he means to or not. Now it’s as if he’s trying to stuff it all inside him, squash it like a slice of Wonder Bread folded up into a cubic millimeter of space. The look doesn’t fit Tatsuya well, but fits Taiga much worse.

That Alex’s mind would jump to that comparison when Taiga lets the words spill out, and then flood as if he’s torn himself open like a plastic shopping bag, is painfun in an unexpected way, like when she slices into her finger with the edge of a piece of paper and only realizes that it fucking hurts after she sees the blood.

“I...what does he want? Does he want to lose or win? Why doesn’t he want to be brothers?”

(As if it’s something you can stop being, as if--even if they never speak again, which isn’t possible, there’s no way--they could erase each other from their pasts, as if basketball and nearly everything else that’s important to them isn’t caught up in it. They’re just kids, but this isn’t the impulsive declarations of hate or animosity most often found in schoolyards or between real siblings. This has been simmering below the surface, but Alex had always thought they would figure it out better than this, and maybe she’s giving them too much credit or their feelings not enough.)

“I don’t know,” Alex says.

She has a good idea, but it’s all conjecture, none of it solid enough to say--but Taiga deserves something, even if it might be off-base.

“He wants things to go back to how they used to be. Everything’s changing, especially the things he least wants to change--some kids deal with it more easily.”

“We were still brothers, though,” says Taiga, reaching for his necklace half-consciously. “That didn’t have to change.”

Maybe he’s right; maybe he’s wrong--but does it matter if Tatsuya disagrees on a fundamental level?

“I’m sorry,” Alex says. 

He hasn’t hugged her this tightly since he came up to her waist, and now he’s nearly as tall as she is.

* * *

Tatsuya doesn’t come to Alex until after Taiga leaves the country. They see each other in passing a couple of times, but it’s always with at least two people between them, physically or metaphorically. After everything with Shuuzou and Mike, though, Tatsuya lets his guard down a little bit, and that’s enough for Alex to pluck him off to the side during a pickup game and brush past his excuses. (A few years ago, she wouldn’t have needed to go that far; they’d be close enough and he’d have trusted her more than he is afraid of himself.)

Tatsuya carries his backpack hanging off one shoulder. Cool kids did that when Alex was a teenager; it doesn’t seem like a long enough period for the trend to cycle back, but maybe it’s a regional thing, or just at a constant level when you’re young enough to have your options for self-expression severely limited. And Tatsuya clearly is cool, not just in the way that Alex thinks of him as a good kid who looks out for the younger ones, but in the way even his same-age peers treat him with deference.

It’s strange to try and wrap her head around the middle-school and high-school politics from her own vantage point. They did matter at the time, and ended up contributing to who she is now, and yet the details are fuzzy like moldy bread. All she remembers clearly from her adolescence is basketball, hanging out with her friends, the very personal and digging sting of rejection. And this whole thing between Tatsuya and Taiga falls into the latter category. It’s important to them, but it’s important to her.

“I don’t want to put you between me and Taiga,” Tatsuya says, opening the door to the Burger King and letting her pass through first.

“You’re not,” she says.

They aren’t, but she’s still being stretched thin. No one is asking her to pick a side; no one is assuming she’d be on one or the other if she had to say. But the bond she has with both of them, springing from the bond they’d had with each other, is straining. 

Tatsuya orders for them both. He still knows her order, original chicken sandwich, medium with Sprite, extra ketchup; he still knows her--or she just isn’t changing or growing much. Bonds die naturally; they break and fall away. But there’s a difference between that and severing what was once a green vine and is now a wooden trunk with effort, between that and not trying to save it at all.

* * *

They are not what they once were. Their relationship is not what it once was, where they’d almost been able to blur the boundary between their lives, but still clear distinct selves, hand in hand, shot for shot, pass for pass. They talk to each other and about each other carefully, as if they’re folding something very delicate, that each crease needs to be done with the lightest press of the tips of their fingernails.

They Skype her together when Tatsuya visits Taiga, her shitty internet breaking up the framerate and scattering pixels across the screen. But both of them are there, next to each other, reaching across the invisible radio waves to her. She is not who she once was either, when they first came to her or when they had started to fall apart or even a few months ago when they’d seemed as close to digging up their bond’s roots and throwing them away as they were to reconciliation. 

“I’m working on a new shot,” Tatsuya says.

“And he won’t show me,” says Taiga.

Tatsuya gives him an amused look, more for his own benefit than for Taiga’s or Alex’s. She notices as he turns his head that they’re wearing the rings over their shirts.


End file.
